Knowledge Share

For the last several weeks JDResources has been reviewing the use of social media in business; Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to name a few.  To be frank, I have been overwhelmed by the number of different, but similar, social media platforms available.  This article is about the “blowout” that happens to many users of these online friend based platforms.  To define “blowout” I will reference a very close friend’s comments about Facebook; “…I started thinking about how much time I spend on Facebook each day and found that I was spending 4-5 hours doing nothing but Facebook stuff” she went on to say “after seeing that number I decided to delete my account.  It was serving no good purpose and I was wasting some much time that I could have been doing something more important”.

During my research I have noticed that people are online during all hours of the day and night, and some seem to be online all the time.  Of course, if you talk to others within our company they would say the same about me.  The real question isn’t how much time you spend online, but what are you doing with that time.

Why are these social media platforms so attractive to people? One reason may be control.  If you call someone on the phone you have to listen to everything they say during the conversation or you are considered to be rude.  With social media you can read what you want and ignore the rest.  The response does not have to be immediate; rather, it can be at your convenience.  It is a lot like email, but no one is excepting you to write an editorial using social media.

Another reason for “blowout” may be caused by the collection of “friends”.  When you get a friend request from someone you barely know, it seems rude not to accept the friend request.  Before you know it you have 100’s of “friends” on your account.  This is not a problem unless you feel you have to keep up with all these “friends”, or respond to every comment or tagged photo.

Social media is a great tool for connecting with people that you might not otherwise keep in touch with, but remember the advantages to the platform; you control the time you spend using them.

Written by Danny Mckinney, CIO at JDResources

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